


Something You've Got But You Never Show

by insatiablerealist



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Alternate Ending, M/M, POV First Person, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Sort Of, not as bad as what's in the book though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-01-19 12:24:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12410271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insatiablerealist/pseuds/insatiablerealist
Summary: When Francis invites Richard to visit him in Boston, Richard goes without a second thought. Once he's in the same place as Francis again, he realizes how much he missed his friend. And even if they don't get along perfectly, their friendship starts to develop into something more.Set during the epilogue, after Sophie breaks up with Richard but before he receives Francis's suicide note, on the premise of "What if Richard came back to the East Coast before Francis was forced to marry Priscilla?"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because I require continuity and hate anachronisms, I imagined this taking place in 1989, with Richard being 25 and Francis 26. It's loosely based on the line in the book after Richard receives Francis's note when he says the last time they saw each other was three years prior, so I'm imagining Richard writing The Secret History the same year that Donna Tartt actually did, making him 28 in '92. None of this has any huge relevance to the story, but that's the timeline I have in mind. 
> 
> Also, this goes without saying but Richard's views/language towards being gay in this chapter are not shared by me.

After Sophie broke up with me, there was nothing holding me in California except inertia. Part of me longed to return to the Northeast, part of me just wanted to get out, but a much larger part was afraid to make any move, so I hung around for another year. When I wasn’t working, I read constantly (usually in English, with the occasional Greek text so I didn’t completely lose it) and made feeble plans to write my dissertation. The manic energy that had driven me to Hampden when I was nineteen was gone, leaving me feeling unmotivated and old. 

I may well have remained in California feeling sorry for myself for the rest of my life if not for a certain letter I received. It was from Francis, telling me I should visit him in Boston. “I’ve moved home and my family’s being dreadful, won’t you please come distract me?” he wrote. I was surprised to hear from him — we hadn’t spoken since my graduation over a year ago — but even more surprising, I found I really wanted to see him again. And even if I didn’t, it gave me an excuse to go east.

Within a week, I was on a plane to Logan. Francis gave me his address in lieu of picking me up from the airport, so I didn’t see his face until he opened the door to his apartment to let me in. 

“Jesus, Francis, you look terrible,” I said without thinking. He looked paler than I remembered, dark circles standing out under his eyes.

“Hello you to you,” he pouted, holding the door open but making no move to help me with my bags.

“Sorry. It  _ is _ good to see you again,” I said as I walked in. In spite of the shock of his haggard look, my heart leapt when I saw that bright red hair again. “But seriously, are you ill or something?”

“I’m getting those panic attacks I got at Hampden again.” Francis said this evenly, not sounding distraught or sorry for himself, but I suddenly and vividly remembered the night he made me drive him to the emergency room, convinced he was having a heart attack. Something on my face must have betrayed this memory, because Francis quickly said, “That’s not why I asked you to come.”

“Of course not.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I never said that!” I genuinely hadn’t been trying to sound flippant but I didn’t mind terribly if he took it that way.

Francis opened his mouth to make another retort, glaring fiercely, and then his face softened and he rolled his eyes instead. “God, this is ridiculous, I didn’t mean to start off your visit bickering with you.” To my surprise, he crossed the room and pulled me into a hug.

Placing my arms hesitantly around him, I tried to remember if he had ever hugged me before. At Hampden he sometimes attached himself to my arm when we were walking together in the cold, and there was that fateful night when we kissed, but hugging was a new and foreign experience.

“I’ve missed you,” Francis said into my shoulder. He pulled back, only to meet my eyes intently.

“You too.” I was aware, in some distant corner of my mind, that in college I would have felt the need to discourage Francis from reading too much into this exchange, but now I made no attempt to do so.

After another brief interlude he snapped himself out of whatever strange mood he had gotten into. “Well!” he said brusquely. “Let’s get you settled in.”

Francis left me to my own devices to unpack and shower. We hadn’t agreed how long I would stay, but on the phone Francis had made vague references to the comfortable guest room and his building’s laundry facilities, implying that he wouldn’t mind if I stayed as long as I wanted. Therefore I packed enough clothes for two weeks and as many books as I could reasonably carry. (Francis also promised that I could use his Athenaeum membership for whatever I needed, another hint that I should extend my stay.) 

That evening, Francis made dinner at home, and I discovered how much I had missed not only his cooking but also the sight of him puttering around a kitchen. The small room in his apartment felt a little lonelier than the kitchen at the country house; the was no Charles coming in for a drink or Bunny trying to steal part of the meal before it was done, but it was a comforting image nonetheless.

While he was cooking, we didn’t have to talk, because he could occupy himself with the food and I could write. Once we sat down to eat, however, the silence became awkward, and we struggled to find topics of conversation that wouldn’t upset one or both of us. Eventually, Francis took up much of the meal explaining the trials through which his family was putting him.

“My grandfather’s decided I’m getting too old to be unwed,” he said.

“Does he know—?” I had never actually mentioned Francis’s homosexuality directly to his face.

“Oh God, no! I’d probably be disowned by now if that were the case. But he’s certainly suspicious that he hasn’t ever met any woman friends of mine at the holidays.”

“But why does it matter if you’re married or not? This isn’t the eighteenth century, plenty of people stay single these days,” I said, ignoring the thought that I was distinctly unhappy about the near-certainty that I would live out the rest of my life alone.

Francis sighed, setting down his fork. “You don’t understand old money families, Richard.” He managed to keep his tone from sounding completely offensive. “The Abernathys need an heir, and I must provide. At least, my grandfather thinks we need an heir. Olivia probably doesn’t give a damn. She might like to give childrearing a go since she didn’t really get a chance with me, but she wouldn’t be cut out for it.”

“So what are you going to do?” I asked. I genuinely felt for him and wouldn’t wish his situation on anyone.

“Avoid the subject. For as long as possible. Maybe Camilla would marry me,” he said thoughtfully.

At the mention of Camilla, we both fell silent, remembering the wide gulf that lay between the days when she and Francis could have easily joked about such a thing and now. We finished dinner without saying much else, only speaking to coordinate who would wash up what.

But then after dinner Francis made us drinks, and we sat at opposite ends of his small couch, once again grasping for something to talk about. It was like this every time I spoke to either him or Camilla nowadays, and I almost regretted my decision to come, or at least to pack so heavily.

The silence was becoming unbearable when Francis asked, as if he had read my mind earlier in the afternoon, “Do you remember the night I kissed you?”

“God, what made you think of that?” I said, forcing a laugh and pretending I’d only just remembered myself.

“I don’t know, I’m getting all nostalgic,” Francis sighed. I thought it might be in poor taste to point out that it was rather odd to feel nostalgic about the night in question since it was also immediately after we killed Bunny. “Do you remember what I said to you about it?” Francis continued.

It took me a minute to figure out he was talking about that uncomfortable car ride. “I said I wasn’t attracted to you and you got all cold and said you weren’t attracted to me either.”

Francis laughed. “Could you blame me? You were terrible. I knew you weren’t interested, I wasn’t going to bring it up.”

“Yes, I supposed I ought to apologize for that.”

He waved me off with one hand while taking a sip of his whiskey. “It’s alright, I was harsh too. Anyway,” he said, “I lied.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wanted you the first moment I knew who you were.” 

I startled at such a direct admission, and the strangely low tone of voice Francis used. I searched his eyes, trying to determine whether he meant only that he had been attracted to me at Hampden, or that he was still attracted to me now.

“Would you panic now as much as you did then?” he asked in the same odd voice. Momentarily considering his question, it occurred to me that his advances weren’t inspiring the same mild terror they might have three years earlier.

“Did you invite me all the way here just to proposition me?” I asked, somewhat put out. I was more offended at the thought that he didn’t want to see me just for the company than that it still hadn’t sunk in that I was heterosexual.

“Why did you drop everything to visit me on such short notice?” he retorted.

“I wanted to get out of California.” 

Francis scoffed. “You could have left California anytime you wanted! I was half surprised my letter still reached you at that address.”

“I was busy with work,” I pointed out. “And I’ve been meaning to start my dissertation.”

“And yet you’re here.”

This line of debate surprised me. Francis and I had often found ourselves at odds when we were younger, but his side of it usually involved sulking and desperate apologies, not so much determination to get me to admit something. “Anyway,” I said, trying to gain the upper hand. “I didn’t exactly have anywhere outside of California to go.”

Francis sat back and took a drink. “Then it’s a good thing I so thoughtfully provided an escape.” His voice was light again. The interrogation, apparently, was over.

I tried to get some reading done when I retired to my room that night, but I couldn’t focus. My mind kept drifting towards the look I had seen in Francis’s eyes.  _ I wanted you the moment I knew who you were. _ I had never heard him talk so frankly about another man, let alone me. Even when he explained his relationship with Charles, he hadn’t allowed himself to sound overtly desirous. 

And yet, despite the novelty of the turn our conversation took, I reacted much less harshly than I had in college. I had grown less uncomfortable with his preferences over time, but that still didn’t explain I didn’t gently dissuade him that evening. The explanation seemed to be that I didn’t think he needed dissuading. 

That was an overwhelming thought. I couldn’t possibly want Francis’s advances; I’d rejected him twice at Hampden. But why had I been so eager to accept his invitation to Boston? I hadn’t told him any lies. I really was ready to leap at any opportunity to come back to the East Coast, but I needed an outside force to pull me here. And on top of that, no matter how fraught our communication had become, I wouldn’t turn down the chance to see either Francis or Camilla again. Francis must be getting into my head, I decided. There was nothing strange about visiting an old friend. A small voice in the back of my mind pointed out that Francis’s invitation hadn’t come with a time frame, so there had really been no need to book the soonest plane ticket I could get. But I forcefully pushed that thought away, rolled over and tried to get some sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this incredibly impulsively, because as of now I only have 2 and a half chapters written and I have no idea how long this will get or if I'll have time and energy to get it to some state of completion. 
> 
> The title is from You Sleep Alone by Hellogoodbye, which I find, perhaps erroneously, very fitting.


	2. Chapter 2

“Richard,” Francis called as he emerged from his bedroom. I was sitting at the kitchen island, in the process of buttering some toast I had helped myself to. “If I said anything that crossed a line last night, I hope you’ll forget it.”

I shrugged, barely looking up from my toast. “I didn’t mind.”

He must not have believed me, since he continued. “I’m getting sentimental in my old age—” I rolled my eyes at the idea that he was old. “—and it’s been so long since we’ve met in person, I just got carried away.”

“Really, it’s nothing,” I assured him, not wanting to dwell on this matter. The more he brought it up the more I had to consider my reaction to his continued attraction, which I was trying to avoid. I wondered why he was being so persistent when he was the one willing to let things go quickly in college.

“Well, if you’re sure.”

“Completely.” I actually looked at Francis now, and noticed again how terrible he looked. Not particularly older, just tired. “I don’t mean to sound rude but you really don’t look well.”

“I told you, I’m not sleeping these days,” he said, suddenly irritable. 

“Isn’t there anything you can take for that?” When Francis had received his diagnosis in the Hampden hospital, I had scoffed at it, but since then I had discovered the wonders of prescription medication that was actually prescribed for my own conditions. But my question just elicited a heavy sigh from my friend.

“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that?” he asked irritably. 

“Alright, I was just asking.” I began to believe that he genuinely didn’t ask me here to play nurse if reacted like this to my attempts at help.

“I’ll put concealer under my eyes if it bothers you so much,” he muttered, rummaging around in the fridge for his own breakfast. “I do that sometimes when I go out, although I hardly ever go out.” I was sorry to hear that, though not at all surprised, considering his paranoia in Manhattan. 

We ate quietly, and it wasn’t until I was rinsing my plate in the sink that Francis spoke again. “Have you got any plans for the day?”

I looked over at him, amused. “Francis, I’m your guest. Why would I make plans that don’t involve you?”

He gave a pleased smile. “In that case, I’m taking you on a tour of the city. You’ve never really seen Boston, have you?” I shook my head. “It’s certainly not my favorite place in the world, but it  _ is  _ my ‘hometown.’ I suppose I’ve got some attachment to it.”

“I’d love to get a tour,” I said honestly. It was the first week of October, and during the taxi ride to Francis’s apartment I had noticed the first red leaves appearing on the trees in his neighborhood. I’d missed that sight in my years away from New England. After getting dressed and drinking more than I had had before 5:00 since college in the form of Bloody Marys, we set off into the cool autumn day.

Francis insisted on walking everywhere, offering some vague explanation about a fear of the subway, but the weather was so pleasant that I didn’t mind — not yet cold, but cooler than I had experienced since my last visit east. Francis led me on a whirlwind tour of Boston’s landmarks with a running commentary on why he had little interest in each one, occasionally interrupted by locations he actually cared about, like the Brattle Book Shop. (“Of course, I don’t read like I used to, but  _ still _ .”) 

I didn’t absorb most of this monologue, too caught up in the sight of fall leaves and red brick to care what he was saying. Boston was utterly different from Hampden, and yet it had the same New England beauty that had drawn me to this part of the country. I couldn’t understand why Francis disparaged this place so much. 

I was distracted too by Francis himself. Out in the sunlight he looked more alive than he had in his apartment, and although lines had appeared around his mouth and eyes since I saw him last, he still had the same aura of the student prince I observed during my first days at Hampden. The circles under his eyes were gone, so I assumed that he hadn’t been lying about using concealer. He was skilled enough with the application, though, that I could hardly notice any unnatural coloring.

By the time the streetlights came on and I started shivering in my thin coat, we returned to the apartment with bags of books and clothes in tow, all bought by Francis. The books were ostensibly for me, although I had no idea how I would get them back to California with me. The shirts were Francis’s, who had alluded to returning to his old habit of giving his cast-offs to me.

“So,” he said when we set down our things, “how do you like the city?”

“It’s terrific,” I replied, perhaps with a little too much gusto, because I saw his eyes twinkle the way they used to when he mocked my Californian manners of speech. 

“You finally got the experience you would have had if you’d come home with me instead of staying in Hampden that dreadful winter,” said Francis. “Except it’s a hell of a lot nicer this time of year than in January.”

“I probably wouldn’t mind as long as I got to stay in a building with heating.”

Francis made a face. “The streets are brown with slush and you’re at risk of slipping into the road every other block. Winter in Hampden was pleasanter, aesthetically speaking. Although,” he added, noticing my distress, “I suppose you’re less likely to die of hypothermia here.”

I gave an approximation of a smile, not wishing to remember my first brush with death, and we both moved further into the apartment to put away our purchases. When we bumped into each other again in the kitchen, Francis reached out for my arm and looked into my eyes. 

“You really do like it here?” he asked. “Enough to stay?”

Thinking he was referring to the duration of my visit, I laughed and readily agreed. It was only later that I understood he had asked a more serious question than that.

Our good mood lasted until we were pleasantly approaching drunk on the couch. I had stopped drinking regularly, and I wondered if Francis was only offering what he thought I wanted or if he had kept up a consistent level of consumption since college. I rather feared for his liver at the prospect of the latter, but I didn’t bring it up.

What I did bring up wasn’t any less foolish for a topic of conversation. All the memories of college made me nostalgic, I suppose, and the alcohol loosened my tongue, hitting me harder than it used to. “Did you ever miss Hampden after you dropped out?”

Francis immediately gave me a dark look. “‘Dropped out.’ Makes me sound like a druggie teenager.”

_ That’s not exactly worse than the truth,  _ I thought. Out loud, I said, “Whatever you call it, you didn’t graduate.”

“What was the point? It’s not like I was going to use a degree for anything, and I couldn’t stand that place anymore,” Francis muttered bitterly. “I didn’t want to spend a whole year ready to jump out of my skin, expecting to be haunted by Bunny or Henry at any moment.”

He took in a sharp breath after that admission and glanced in my direction, probably wondering if my remaining time at Hampden had been like his fears. Truthfully, I managed to distract myself with drugs, coursework, and later, Sophie, but the first fall when everyone was gone but me had been miserable.

“Is that why you went to California?” Francis asked, voice low. “Were you afraid of being haunted?”

“I went to California because I thought I would marry my girlfriend,” I sighed. Francis snorted and opened his mouth to make some quip, but I ignored him. “I’d feel haunted anywhere I go.”

That shut him up. We had never discussed this so openly, not after he and the twins left. For a moment we watched each other, until Francis broke the tension. “If that were the case, why didn’t you just come back here?”

“I told you.”

“After she left you, then.”

“I don’t know, Francis,” I snapped. He was starting to annoy me.

“It’s been terribly lonely with Camilla with her grandmother and Charles who knows where you on the other side of the goddamn country,” he shot back. 

“When we lived in the same city we hardly saw each other,” I reminded him. “And at least I visit you here sometimes. You’ve never come to me.”

“Because you live in Cali _ fornia _ ,” Francis whined.

We both attempted to stare each other down. “You know, I put up with your snobbery when I was 20 but I’ve gotten quite sick of it since then,” I replied coolly, standing up.

His affect immediately changed and I remembered every spat we had in college. “Richard, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like that. Of course you don’t want to put up with it, I wasn’t trying to be insulting,” he said, moving to stop me. “But you can’t pretend you’re all that attached to California!”

He was right, but I wasn’t ready to let him know. “I’m feeling pretty tired, I think I’ll turn in,” I said. 

Francis sighed and fell back onto the couch. “Goodnight!” he called testily as I let my bedroom door slam behind me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be more eventful, I promise, but it might take me a while to get it posted because college is kicking my ass. Believe it or not I live 40 minutes outside of Boston, although I write about it like someone who visited once.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't abandoned this! I thought Richard and Francis were going to actually get together in this chapter, but that didn't end up happening. 
> 
> Also, just to clarify, I'm not going in with the intention of writing a proper romance. I love them both, but they're not good people, and not just because they murdered people, so this isn't a typical sweet falling in love story. That being said, this chapter is definitely the angstiest this fic will ever get and it's not too bad, in my opinion.

The next few days progressed much like the first. We got along and even enjoyed ourselves, until something reminded us of why we hardly ever enjoyed ourselves anymore, and instantly we snapped. Every night we went to bed barely speaking to each other. 

The next morning Francis would adopt a more genuine than desperate apologetic air, and I would mumble something about a short temper and “not really your fault.” And the whole cycle would repeat again. 

After the third fight I was ready to book a seat on the next flight home, and I probably would have in the morning if I had slept through the night. Instead, I was jolted awake a little after 1:00 am by a series of sharp knocks on my door and Francis calling my name.

I switched on the lamp and stumbled up, bleary-eyed, to pull the door open. On the other side I found Francis, clutching a bathrobe around himself and shivering slightly.

“What the hell’s going on?” I asked. I had visions of the building going up in flames around us.

“You remember I told you my panic disorder came back?” Francis said breathily.

I sighed. “Do you need to go to the hospital or something?” 

He shook his head in a jerky motion. “No, that wouldn’t do any good. They’ll just tell me to see a psychiatrist again.”

I wracked my brains, trying to remember what I had against psychiatry the first time Francis was referred in Hampden. Oh yes, I thought a psychiatrist could peer into his mind and discover he was a murderer. It would have struck me as foolish now if I didn’t remember the blind paranoia I lived with for months after Bunny’s death. 

“Are you sure that’s such a bad idea?” I asked now.

Francis gave me a dour look. “I’m not having someone go poking around in my mind trying to figure out what’s wrong, I know why I’m like this.”

“Well, maybe they could tell you how to fix it. Or at least make it less severe.” I was genuinely concerned about him; he was breathing very fast and looked more pallid than normal.

“I’m not going, Richard.”

“Fine, then what do you want me to do?” 

Francis fell silent, and I wondered if he had anything in particular in mind when he knocked on my door or if he just didn’t want to be alone. Eventually, looking at the wall beside me instead of meeting my eye, he asked, “Could you read to me?”

“What?”

“I just need some kind of distraction. Pick one of your academic texts analyzing some play I haven’t read and I’ll try to keep up. Please?” he added when I didn’t immediately react.

“All right,” I agreed. “But—sorry, but I’m hardly awake, I don’t really want to sit up in the living room.”

“Well,” Francis said. “I wouldn’t mind sitting on your bed. If you don’t mind, of course.”

I considered the situation, and decided that any potential awkwardness was worth returning to my warm, soft bed. I turned back into my room, with Francis following, and looked through the books we bought on my first day here. I pulled out _Moral Experiment in Jacobean Drama_ and turned back to Francis. He was tucked neatly to one side of my bed, still holding himself stiffly. Trying not to think too hard about the position we were in, I sat down on what had become my side of the bed, and because I was chilly, pulled the blankets back over my legs.

I opened to a random page and began to read, keeping my voice as calm and steady as I could. After a few minutes I noticed I was paying more attention to the pace of Francis’s breathing than the words on the page. When I reached the end of the chapter I had opened to, it had slowed to a reasonable pace and I had failed to absorb a single thing I read.

“Do you want me to keep going?” I asked, looking over at Francis. His posture was more relaxed now, and as I watched, he tried to suppress a yawn.

“Yes please, if that’s all right,” he murmured. I raised an eyebrow as he yawned again, but carried on anyway.

Halfway through the next chapter, I twitched when Francis’s head hit my shoulder. He had fallen asleep. I rolled my eyes, but after setting the book on the bedside table, I shifted him carefully until his head was on a pillow and not me. He didn’t stir during this process, so I turned off the light and made to go back to sleep myself. I threw the top blanket over Francis as an afterthought, and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I woke up slowly in the morning. I was momentarily unsure where I was, registering that something felt unfamiliar. As I regained a bit more consciousness, it became clear that the unfamiliar thing was Francis. Somehow in the night we had more or less wrapped ourselves around each other, but this was made quite awkward since there were several layers of blankets and sheets between us. I wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but curling up in bed together was so antithetical to our normal behavior that I felt the need to extract myself. 

Unsurprisingly, this turned out to be easier said than done. After a minute or two of struggling, I gave up and fell back against my pillow. Francis’s face was awfully close to mine. In sleep, the tension I had seen in it the night before had faded, and he looked young again. Beautiful. As I watched, his eyes fluttered open.

He smiled when he registered I was beside him. “Hello,” he said softly.

I don’t know what came over me. Without saying anything, I leaned in and kissed Francis on the mouth.

“Oh, God,” I gasped, pulling back sharply.

Francis looked rather shocked, but not as horrified as I felt. “ _Finally_ ,” he breathed, and wrapped an arm around my neck to pull me back in. I hadn’t expected this turn of events, but it wasn’t unpleasant, so I kissed Francis back.

After a couple minutes, he let go of me, both of us a little breathless. “That was a lovely way to wake up,” he murmured. “But I’m really not entirely awake yet. Do you mind if I drift off again?” His eyes were already slipping shut. 

I untangled myself from him as gently as I could, ignoring the shaking in my hands. Not knowing what to do with myself, and feeling quite strange about staying in bed with Francis, I went to the kitchen. I fidgeted with the bread bag I found in the fridge until I settled on making toast.

As I stared at the toaster, I considered the morning’s events. I couldn’t tell what had compelled me to kiss Francis. I had found him attractive in sleep, but I had never been inclined in his general direction before. Or had I? All of our interactions in the last week began to take on a new light. My enjoyment of our walks around the city, the continued attempts to reconcile all the stupid conflicts we had, the fact that I was here at all.

Before I could get too carried away, my toast popped up, and Francis entered the kitchen. I expected him to be groggy, but he looked alert, a slight frown tugging at his mouth.

“Richard, what was that all about?” he asked.

I paused in the middle of spreading butter. “What?”

“Just now,” he said impatiently, wrapping his dressing down more tightly around himself. 

“I really don’t know,” I answered honestly, not sure what he was getting at.

“You’re not going to confess your love to me? Admit your long-stifled sexuality?” 

“I wasn’t about to, why? Should I?”

He let out a sharp sigh. “God, you’re hopeless.”

“Look, Francis, you kissed me back,” I pointed out, flustered. I wasn’t at all sure of anything at the moment, and I hadn’t been prepared for his attitude to shift so suddenly.

He rolled his eyes. “I was half asleep. You started it this time, so it’s not like in your dorm when you could claim that it was all me throwing myself on you,” he said coolly. 

“I know I started it, but it didn’t—”

“Didn’t what? Mean anything?” He glared daggers at me, so I felt I couldn’t contradict him. “I’m not the same person I was at Hampden, you know. I’m not going to let myself get used by every heterosexual man who can’t find a woman, who’ll push me away as soon as I get a little too friendly.”

I stayed silent for a moment, the memory of Charles hanging between us. “I don’t want to use you.” I was surprised to realize how much I meant it when I said it aloud.

“In that case, I’d like you to refrain from kissing me until you figure out your apparent identity crisis.”

“All right.” I was still bewildered by his sudden cold demeanor; at the beginning of the week he’d been implying he was still attracted to me. “Do you want me to stay, or should I leave?”

Francis looked at me, clearly thinking it over. “Will you stop kissing me first thing in the morning?”

“Will you stop crawling into my bed in the middle of the night?”

He smiled at that. “Yes, I suppose that’s a fair deal. You can stay.”

Even though I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong, I felt a sense of relief wash over me when I heard his words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's an explanation for all the miscommunication and it will all be resolved eventually.
> 
> "Moral Experiment in Jacobean Drama" is a real book that was published in 1989, so it's theoretically historically accurate that Richard would possess a copy, but I know nothing about it beyond that.
> 
> There will be less of a delay between the next chapter, I promise. I had no idea how crazy this semester of college would get. I wrote this instead of writing my History final paper, and I'll write chapter 4 over Christmas break. It will probably be the last "real" chapter, but I'm still planning on writing an epilogue that might end up longer than the other chapters.


	4. Chapter 4

Francis and I avoided each other for the rest of the day after the bewildering confrontation over breakfast. He slipped back into his room with a mug of coffee, and then a half hour or so later, I heard him go out. Francis hadn’t ever left his apartment alone while I’d been with him before now. When I heard the door shut behind him, I felt wounded that his issue with me was strong enough to overcome his anxiety, but also bizarrely glad to see him getting outside. 

I considered leaving the apartment myself, but I didn’t have the energy to bring my books and papers to a coffeeshop and organize them there, and I guessed I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. Instead, I spent most of the day agonizing about the morning’s events. Every question I thought of seemed to lead to another: Why did Francis react so badly if he kissed me back? Why did he kiss me back? Why did _I_ kiss _Francis_? 

Several times over the last decade I assured myself and anyone to whom it was relevant of my sexuality, only now I didn’t feel so sure about it anymore. At some point, apparently in the past week, Francis had become attractive to me, and nothing at all seemed sure anymore in the wake of that discovery. 

As I tried to find some moment in which this might have occurred, I kept returning to our day in Boston. His red hair glowing in the sun, playing off the colors of the autumn leaves around us; a rare burst of laughter at something not very funny I’d said. As I remembered the gleam in his eyes when he refrained from mocking my manners of speech, my stomach swooped suddenly, and I realized with some alarm that the last time I’d felt that particular sensation was the first time Sophie told me she loved me. Jesus, I was in deeper than I thought. 

After determining I was in—no, I still couldn’t say it—infatuated with Francis, and therefore apparently not as straight as I’d thought, I set about figuring out what to do about it. The logical thing to do would be to talk to him, but that was impossible for the time being, and terrifying regardless of when I did it. Given his attitude in the morning, I was convinced that one wrong word would send him storming out of the apartment again. Assuming he eventually came back in the first place. 

Discouraged by that line of thought, I tried to decide what the ideal solution to this mess would be. For one warm instant, when we were both still half-asleep and Francis had smiled at me, it had been as if we were normal people with no dark past overshadowing us and making all our interactions pained and hesitant. I wished I could hold on to that feeling forever, but it had been so fleeting, and I’d been so dazed that I’d hardly appreciated it. Perhaps if—I could barely accept the thought—perhaps if we woke up beside each other every morning, I would get something of that feeling back every once in a while. 

It seemed I did have a confession to make to Francis after all. 

Unfortunately, he remained absent until well after dinner time. I ate leftovers at the kitchen counter, not wanting to go to the trouble of cooking for one. Only a week ago that had been all I did, at home in California. But already that felt like a contradiction in terms; this city I barely knew felt more like home than anywhere else I’d lived besides Hampden. 

By the time Francis returned, I’d lost my nerve, so when he came in the door and saw me on the couch with a book and a glass of wine (I was rereading the chapter of _Moral Experiment in Jacobean Drama_ I’d read the night before, and taking no more of it in than I had the first time), I closed my book but I didn’t immediately speak up. After an uncomfortable silence, he did.

“I think I owe you an apology,” he began stiffly, perching himself on the far arm of the couch. “You see, it’s hard, when you want something for so long, and then it happens, but you know it’s not really what you want.” I wasn’t sure I followed, but I didn’t want to interrupt. “I don’t exactly rescind anything I said, but I suppose I could have said it more nicely.”

“You could have . . . rejected me more nicely?” I knew this was a bad angle to take but I couldn’t help myself.

As expected, Francis sighed, an angry glint coming to his eyes. “I didn’t reject you, you rejected me!”

“ _What_?” 

“I asked you if you were actually going to admit to any emotion or continue to suppress it like you always did, and you said you had no plans to that effect,” he said.

“That’s _not_ what you said,” I snapped, setting my wine on the side table hard enough to slosh it. “Didn’t it occur to you that if I honestly hadn’t ever believed I was anything other than heterosexual it might be difficult to clearly state that within ten minutes of that realization?” 

I waited for Francis to say something, but he only watched me intently, face unreadable, so I continued. “I think now I might have a different response for you than I did this morning.”

“So which is it, are you going to come out or confess your love?” Francis asked with a heavy dose of mockery in his tone.

“Both, I think,” I said mildly.

He let out a breath. “So when you kissed me this morning, it didn’t mean nothing after all?”

“No! I didn’t really know _what_ it meant when I did it, but I was trying to think.”

“And now that you’ve thought?” He was barely still on the arm of the couch now, balanced on the edge and leaning in towards me.

“It’s still all very new,” I warned him. “I don’t know how to say a lot of it. But—I felt better in that moment than I’ve felt in years, so I’d like to repeat the experience.” I took a breath. “And I would have said something to that effect if you’d let me think about it for half a minute.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

“Don’t ruin the moment, Richard,” Francis muttered.

“ _I’m_ the one ruining—?”

“Shut up.” He slid off the couch arm and next to me in one motion, and kissed me soundly in the next. I kissed back with much more enthusiasm than I’d had when he’d taken me by surprise that morning. Even though I was gripping the back of it with one hand, I hardly noticed that Francis was still in his coat, since my other hand was buried in his hair and his tongue was slipping into my mouth. 

Eventually, when we were sprawled out on the couch like teenagers, Francis pulled back for air, so I took the opportunity to ask the question that had been bugging me.

“What did you mean, about the thing you wanted happening and it not being what you wanted?”

Francis sighed, propping himself up on one arm. “I already told you, practically.” I gave him a blank look, prompting him to elaborate. “I always hoped, but I thought you’d never come around. You were always so determined to be heterosexual in college, and my attempts to sway you never went over well.”

“I thought I was ‘just there.’” 

He rolled his eyes, trying to shift into a more comfortable position. “I wasn’t a slut. I wouldn’t have come on to you if I wasn’t legitimately interested. And at first I thought you might—but it never worked.”

“So, what, have you been in love with me since college?” It was kind of an alarming thought, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t flattered.

“I wasn’t in _love,_ not for ages. And then you came here and we’ve been so domestic, and it was so nice just having company every day. I couldn’t help it. That’s why I kissed you back, because I was a little in love by that point.” He paused, noticed my wine glass on the table, and took a sip before diving back in. “But we fight every day, and you still wouldn’t admit you’re not straight. I thought I’d just get my heart broken, and as I told you rather coldly this morning, I’m in the habit of avoiding people who are likely to break my heart these days.”

“So what changed just now?” He was still lying on top of me despite all these doubts. “Besides, well, I appear to have accepted that I’m not straight.”

Francis smiled, and gave me another quick kiss. “You have indeed. And we still have quite a bit to talk about. But for the time being, I’m not a complete masochist, so I’m not going to deprive us both of the pleasure just because we haven’t ironed out all the details.”

I shrugged, as much as I could lying down. I supposed that was the best I was going to get. Francis sat up, pulled me upright too, and finally took off his coat, throwing it over the back of the couch. Suddenly he gave me a sly grin. “Cubitum eamus?”

I immediately shoved him off the couch. “You’re terrible! I can’t believe that was the first thing you said to me.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” he laughed, leaping up and tugging me to my feet.

“Only took you, what, six years?” I teased as I allowed myself to be dragged to Francis’s bedroom.

“Oh, you’re worth the wait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank god I actually got this done in the same week as Christmas. As you can tell, I'm dragging it out for one more chapter (and then an epilogue, which is already getting away from me as well). Absolutely no idea when that'll be up, possibly later this week and possibly in February. 
> 
> If you're still reading, I'd love it if you leave a comment or hit me up on [tumblr](http://wheretheeternalare.tumblr.com/ask)!


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